DIAZ DEL CASTILLO, BERNAL

born c. 1492, , Medina del Campo, Castile died 1581?, Guatemala Spanish soldier and author, who took part in the conquest of Mexico. In 1514 he visited Cuba and five years later accompanied Hernn Corts to Mexico. In protest against the academic chronicles of sedentary historians he wrote his Verdadera historia de la conquista de la Nueva Espaa (1632; True History of the Conquest of New Spain), insisting that, as actor and eyewitness, he was better situated to record the truth of the expeditions in their topographical and military details. This true history, written in an unassuming, colloquial style, has historical and artistic value and is a source book of idiomatic 16th-century Spanish.